Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on July 19, 2006 6:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
High-Resolution Gaming Performance
We are using the same game benchmarks in our standard gaming performance section that consists of Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. All boards were tested with the EVGA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.31 WHQL drivers. The Intel 975X boards were also tested with a single ATI X1900XTX card with the Catalyst 6.6 driver. The SLI results on the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE utilized two EVGA 7900GTX cards and the 91.31 drivers with profiles enabled for each game. The CrossFire results on the Intel 975X boards utilized our ATI X1900XTX and X1900 CrossFire Edition cards with the 6.6 Catalyst driver.
The single card 1600x1200 results with the EVGA 7900GTX card shows the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE taking a clean sweep of the benchmarks. The performance of the 7900GTX and nForce4 Intel Edition chipset made a small but measurable difference at the higher resolutions as the boards started to become GPU bound. Due to the strength of the NVIDIA SLI setup along with obvious ATI issues in the Half Life 2: Lost Coast and Quake 4 benchmarks this same board sweeps our multi-GPU tests.
However, we also noticed where the ATI cards made a very strong showing in our standard benchmarks in F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2 by finishing first, they fell behind the SLI setup when running CrossFire indicating a lack of optimizations or possible driver issues in our tests. The performance percentage drop of the ASRock board compared to the other boards when moving to 1600x1200 was even greater than at 1280x1024 indicating that X4 PCIe operation is certainly hampering its performance.
We are using the same game benchmarks in our standard gaming performance section that consists of Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. All boards were tested with the EVGA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.31 WHQL drivers. The Intel 975X boards were also tested with a single ATI X1900XTX card with the Catalyst 6.6 driver. The SLI results on the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE utilized two EVGA 7900GTX cards and the 91.31 drivers with profiles enabled for each game. The CrossFire results on the Intel 975X boards utilized our ATI X1900XTX and X1900 CrossFire Edition cards with the 6.6 Catalyst driver.
The single card 1600x1200 results with the EVGA 7900GTX card shows the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE taking a clean sweep of the benchmarks. The performance of the 7900GTX and nForce4 Intel Edition chipset made a small but measurable difference at the higher resolutions as the boards started to become GPU bound. Due to the strength of the NVIDIA SLI setup along with obvious ATI issues in the Half Life 2: Lost Coast and Quake 4 benchmarks this same board sweeps our multi-GPU tests.
However, we also noticed where the ATI cards made a very strong showing in our standard benchmarks in F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2 by finishing first, they fell behind the SLI setup when running CrossFire indicating a lack of optimizations or possible driver issues in our tests. The performance percentage drop of the ASRock board compared to the other boards when moving to 1600x1200 was even greater than at 1280x1024 indicating that X4 PCIe operation is certainly hampering its performance.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Erm... onboard sound isn't "legacy". As for the others, the instant you release something without floppy support, someone is going to want to install an OS that needs drivers on a floppy (XP). I still find BIOS updates to be far more successful when done from a floppy as well. Give it another year and the floppy might truly start to disappear; we just need better support for USB storage devices.Makaveli - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Could u elaborate little more on the painful part of going from the AMD system to the conroe.rjm55 - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
What they said in the recommendations was pretty clear: "Most of our Reference systems have been based on AMD/AM2 for the last couple of years. To be honest, going back to some of those same systems after our Conroe testing, the differences are more obvious and painful than you might think. Conroe is clearly the faster platform - and not by small, barely measurable differences."They said it was painful going back to the slower AMD systems for some testing after working with all these Conroe boards.
phusg - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
I think Makaveli's point is how is is slower? Gaming, switching apps, overall? I'm interested in some elaboration on this point too.mine - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
missed the abit ab 9 proonly 965 board so far that showed some improvements in real wotld apps. over the 975.
but great review so far ...wait for more ..
Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
We really wanted to include the Abit AB9 Pro, however we did not have time to fully test the latest bios that unlocks the memory timings. We did not feel it would be fair to the readers or Abit to publish numbers until we had a shipping bios for review. I will not go through another a review of system with a bios that is not going to be released. ;-) We will post a follow up once we have concluded our testing.DeathSniper - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
On page 3:I'm thinking you wanted to use 'coarse'? :D
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Our grammar checking software needs an education :D Fixed.archcommus - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Once again you guys continue to impress me. Can't think of another site that delivers this much (and this high quality) content.Thanks for keeping us informed!
vmsein - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Hello gentlemen and thanks for the informative article. Could you let us know which BIOS version was used for testing on the P5W-DH? Thanks in advance!